The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the
magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by
particular merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us
sufficient to carry us either to London or back to Hull as we thought
fit.
Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home,
I had been happy, and my father, as in our blessed Saviour’s parable,
had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went
away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads, it was a great while before he
had any assurances that I was not drowned.
But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could
resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my
more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know
not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling
decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own
destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with
our eyes open. Certainly, nothing but some such decreed unavoidable
misery, which it was impossible for me to escape, could have pushed me
forward against the calm reasonings and persuasions of my most retired
thoughts, and against two such visible instructions as I had met with
in my first attempt.
My comrade, who had helped to harden me before, and who was the
master’s son, was now less forward than I. The first time he spoke to
me after we were at Yarmouth, which was not till two or three days, for
we were separated in the town to several quarters; I say, the first
time he saw me, it appeared his tone was altered; and, looking very
melancholy, and shaking his head, he asked me how I did, and telling
his father who I was, and how I had come this voyage only for a trial,
in order to go further abroad, his father, turning to me with a very
grave and concerned tone “Young man,” says he, “you ought never to go
to sea any more; you ought to take this for a plain and visible token
that you are not to be a seafaring man.” “Why, sir,” said I, “will you
go to sea no more?” “That is another case,” said he; “it is my calling,
and therefore my duty; but as you made this voyage on trial, you see
what a taste Heaven has given you of what you are to expect if you
persist. Perhaps this has all befallen us on your account, like Jonah
in the ship of Tarshish. Pray,” continues he, “what are you; and on
what account did you go to sea?” Upon that I told him some of my story;
at the end of which he burst out into a strange kind of passion: “What
had I done,” says he, “that such an unhappy wretch should come into my
ship? I would not set my foot in the same ship with thee again for a
thousand pounds.” This indeed was, as I said, an excursion of his
spirits, which were yet agitated by the sense of his loss, and was
farther than he could have authority to go. However, he afterwards
talked very gravely to me, exhorting me to go back to my father, and
not tempt Providence to my ruin, telling me I might see a visible hand
of Heaven against me. “And, young man,” said he, “depend upon it, if
you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing but
disasters and disappointments, till your father’s words are fulfilled
upon you.”
We parted soon after; for I made him little answer, and I saw him no
more; which way he went I knew not. As for me, having some money in my
pocket, I travelled to London by land; and there, as well as on the
road, had many struggles with myself what course of life I should take,
and whether I should go home or to sea.
As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my
thoughts, and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at
among the neighbours, and should be ashamed to see, not my father and
mother only, but even everybody else; from whence I have since often
observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind
is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in
such cases—viz. that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed
to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be
esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make
them be esteemed wise men.
In this state of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what
measures to take, and what course of life to lead. An irresistible
reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed away a while, the
remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off, and as that abated,
the little motion I had in my desires to return wore off with it, till
at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it, and looked out for a
voyage.
CHAPTER II. SLAVERY AND ESCAPE
That evil influence which carried me first away from my father’s
house—which hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of raising
my fortune, and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me as to
make me deaf to all good advice, and to the entreaties and even the
commands of my father—I say, the same influence, whatever it was,
presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I
went on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa; or, as our sailors
vulgarly called it, a voyage to Guinea.
It was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not ship
myself as a sailor; when, though I might indeed have worked a little
harder than ordinary, yet at the same time I should have learnt the
duty and office of a fore-mast man, and in time might have qualified
myself for a mate or lieutenant, if not for a master. But as it was
always my fate to choose for the worse, so I did here; for having money
in my pocket and good clothes upon my back, I would always go on board
in the habit of a gentleman; and so I neither had any business in the
ship, nor learned to do any.
It was my lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in London,
which does not always happen to such loose and misguided young fellows
as I then was; the devil generally not omitting to lay some snare for
them very early; but it was not so with me. I first got acquainted with
the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea; and who,
having had very good success there, was resolved to go again. This
captain taking a fancy to my conversation, which was not at all
disagreeable at that time, hearing me say I had a mind to see the
world, told me if I would go the voyage with him I should be at no
expense; I should be his messmate and his companion; and if I could
carry anything with me, I should have all the advantage of it that the
trade would admit; and perhaps I might meet with some encouragement.
I embraced the offer; and entering into a strict friendship with this
captain, who was an honest, plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with
him, and carried a small adventure with me, which, by the disinterested
honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very considerably; for I
carried about £40 in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me
to buy. These £40 I had mustered together by the assistance of some of
my relations whom I corresponded with; and who, I believe, got my
father, or at least my mother, to contribute so much as that to my
first adventure.
This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my
adventures, which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my friend the
captain; under whom also I got a competent knowledge of the mathematics
and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep an account of the
ship’s course, take an observation, and, in short, to understand some
things that were needful to be understood by a sailor; for, as he took
delight to instruct me, I took delight to learn; and, in a word, this
voyage made me both a sailor and a merchant; for I brought home five
pounds nine ounces of gold-dust for my adventure, which yielded me in
London, at my return, almost £300; and this filled me with those
aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin.
Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly, that I
was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the
excessive heat of the climate; our principal trading being upon the
coast, from latitude of 15 degrees north even to the line itself.
I was now set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great
misfortune, dying soon after his arrival, I resolved to go the same
voyage again, and I embarked in the same vessel with one who was his
mate in the former voyage, and had now got the command of the ship.
This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not
carry quite £100 of my new-gained wealth, so that I had £200 left,
which I had lodged with my friend’s widow, who was very just to me, yet
I fell into terrible misfortunes. The first was this: our ship making
her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those islands
and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the morning by a
Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she
could make. We crowded also as much canvas as our yards would spread,
or our masts carry, to get clear; but finding the pirate gained upon
us, and would certainly come up with us in a few hours, we prepared to
fight; our ship having twelve guns, and the rogue eighteen. About three
in the afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to, by mistake, just
athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended, we
brought eight of our guns to bear on that side, and poured in a
broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning our
fire, and pouring in also his small shot from near two hundred men
which he had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men
keeping close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend
ourselves. But laying us on board the next time upon our other quarter,
he entered sixty men upon our decks, who immediately fell to cutting
and hacking the sails and rigging. We plied them with small shot,
half-pikes, powder-chests, and such like, and cleared our deck of them
twice. However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our
ship being disabled, and three of our men killed, and eight wounded, we
were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a
port belonging to the Moors.
The usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I apprehended;
nor was I carried up the country to the emperor’s court, as the rest of
our men were, but was kept by the captain of the rover as his proper
prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble, and fit for his
business. At this surprising change of my circumstances, from a
merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I
looked back upon my father’s prophetic discourse to me, that I should
be miserable and have none to relieve me, which I thought was now so
effectually brought to pass that I could not be worse; for now the hand
of Heaven had overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption; but,
alas! this was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will
appear in the sequel of this story.
As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was
in hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea again,
believing that it would some time or other be his fate to be taken by a
Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set at
liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to
sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden, and do the
common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came home again
from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin to look after the
ship.
Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to
effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it;